per hour and attempt to set a new record for falling faster than the speed of sound. we're told that his balloon is being unloaded. it takes an hour to unfold, and then it takes an hour to inflate. now, they haven't said the launch is a complete go because the weather is still iffy, but the mere fact they're unloading this balloon and loading it up is a good sign that felix will get to make his jump. of course, we'll keep you posted. thanks for joining me today. cnn ne"newsroom" continues with ashleigh banfield. >> thank you so much. it's 11:00 on the east coast. two things were very clear even before we learned the sentence for jerry sandusky. that 68-year-old former penn state assistant football coach is walking towards the rest of his life in prison. and his conviction notwithstanding on 45 counts of sexually abusing children, he still insists that he, jerry sandusky, the man behind the glass, is the victim.

this sentence was almost a formality. 30 to 60 years behind bars. that's what the judge said. much more compelling though, the words that were spoken today, and i don't necessarily mean just from jerry sandusky. cnn's jason carroll was inside the courtroom. he's just come out to join us. all right. so play out for me exactly what happened in that courtroom where our cameras 3r7weren't allowed. >> reporter: well, it was a courtroom filled with emotion beginning, first of all, with the victims who came to address the court, who spoke about the pain and the anguish that they suffered over many, many years at the hands of jerry sandusky. victim number six, that is a young man identified as victim number six, he stood, he addressed the court. he said, quote, that night you told me you were the tickle monster so you could touch my 11-year-old body. i realize just how much you manipulated me. when he said this though, he did not look at jerry sandusky who

was seated just to his right. he looked directly straight in front of him at the judge as he addressed the court. after him we heard from victim number five, another young man. he stood up and said, and cried as he said it, he said the sentence will never erase what he did to me. it will never make me whole. he must pay for his crimes, take into account the tears, the pain, and the private anguish. that's what he told the judge just before he sat down. and then victim number four stood up, and throughout the entire proceeding, throughout the entire court case, out of all the victims, to me he seemed to be the most feisty. he did not cry when he stood and addressed the court. he did look at jerry sandusky not once, not twice, but several times as he read from his statement, and he said, i don't know if i can ever forgive you. i don't know if i can ever forgive you. and so then he sat down. and then we heard from the man himself. we heard from jerry sandusky.

when he stood up, he was still wearing, of course, his red uniform from the correctional facility. he said, others can make me out to be a monster, but you can't take away my heart. i did not do these disgusting things. he went on to say i feel the need to talk not for fear or for arrogance, but from my heart. i'm filled with emotion and determination, i did not do these disgusting things. and then he referred to a football reference and talked about his wife, dottie. dottie was seated to his right in the courtroom, and in fact, when he walked into the courtroom, the first thing he did was looked over, he waved at her, smiled at her. the family smiled back at him, his children. he said i told dottie, he was he was reading his statement, he spoke for about 13 minutes, we are in the fourth quarter. you definitely find out who your friends are, who will stand by you. i like to believe they know me the most.

they are standing by me. and then ashleigh, for the first time he became emotional. he raised his voice. he choked up with tears, and he said, we're going to smile, and i have to tell you why he said that. it's because he was criticized not just about the prosecutor, but by some of the victims themselves for smiling his way through the court case. he cried when he said this, he said we are going to smile and laugh. we are going to smile and laugh because that's who we are. we smile through the pain. so these are just some of the things that were said just before the judge issued his sentence. >> and jason, just so we're aware of the actual functioning now of the process, we've been looking at some pictures of jerry sandusky now not in yellow prison garb, but in crimson prison quarterback and gettigar processing ahead. exactly what's going to the happen today from the moment he leaves to the courthouse until

he ends up in the state prison where he's supposed to serve out the rest of his life. >> reporter: he will go back for ten days or so while he's processed. then he will be transferred to a transitional facility for lack of a better term, and there he could be there for a period of time, 30 days, 60 days while he receives more evaluations before he's finally transferred on to his permanent prison facility which will be somewhere obviously here in the state of pennsylvania. i have to tell you, it was also very interesting to hear from judge cleland himself who said this was a tragedy, a story not just about boys being abused, but about real betrayal. he said not just betrayal of the psyche, not just betrayal of the heart, but of the soul, and that's what he said before he sentenced sandusky to a minimum of 30 years in jail, and he also made it very clear to the court, ashlei ashleigh, that the law allowed him to sentence him to hundreds of years fe wanted, but he told

the court, i feel as though that's too abstract and that's why he wanted to sentence him to something that he said he could actually realize and take to heart. >> well, the judge in the madoff case didn't think 150 years was abstract but everyone is entitled to his opinion. we'll see you as the coverage continues for the more than likely appeal in bellefonte, pennsylvania, jason carroll reporting for us live outside of the courthouse. in the legal briefs obviously what comes now is the question why, why the numbers, why the statements, why, why, why, and how did it play out the way it did? paul callan is the one who knows most about this. first off, when i saw 30 to 60 years i thought madoff, that sounds low. 150 years for madoff. a minimum of 30 for this man. granted, he's 68, but is that what this was about? is it the fact he was 68 that the judge decided not to go consecutive with the hundreds of years he could have lambasted him with? >> well, i think the judge is

looking at the appellate court which is going to be reviewing the case and i think he didn't want to look like he was being overly vindictive. when you hand down a sentence of 400 years you usually think of that for somebody who has committed a murder or, you know, or multiple murders -- >> raping a series of children among people's purview is akin to murder, around isn't that exactly what sometimes sentences are supposed to do, give a message that society abhors this behavior? >> i would never try to argue with you on this ashleigh, because i will lose, because you are absolutely right about this. >> it's a passionate story. >> however, if you're a judge sitting in this case and you're saying to yourself, they're going to be looking at this transcript, they're going to be reviewing, i don't want to look overly vindictive, i'm going to give him 30 to 60 years, that's probably going to ensure he will die in jail, justice is probably done. i'm sure the judge wrestled with this. he could have given him 400 years. >> here is the other thing, paul. a lot of times they say you get this massive sentencing range and it's up to the judge, and a lot of what it comes down to is

the message, but also what is this former defendant, now felon, going to say to me when he makes this comment? is he going to seek mercy, is he going to apologize and take responsibility for his actions? not only did he not do that in court, listen to the tape he released on the eve of sentencing from his jail cell. kr a listen. >> they can take away my life, they can make me out as a monster, they can treat me as a monster, but they can't take away my heart. in my heart i know i did not do these alleged disgusting acts. my wife has been my only sex partner and that was after marriage. >> all right. so that's one of the excerpts from the tape. there's another excerpt plaming the victims and in no uncertain terms say this was all about vindictive behavior and money. let's lirsen to that. >> over and over i ask why, why didn't we have a fair opportunity to prepare for trial? why have so many people suffered

as a result of false allegations? what's the purpose? >> okay. so here is a judge facing down a guy who on the eve of this procedure, of this process, is effectively blaming the judge for messing up his case. and yet this judge could have tacked on so much more and by some accounts went easy on him. >> well, you know, the judge was very, very restrained. i mean, not only did sandusky say this stuff, but he leaked it to a college radio station the night before sentencing, essentially criticizing the judge, attacking the victims, not saying i'm sorry for this, not trying to show a reason for a lower sentence, but, in fact, you know, asking for a higher sentence. >> i got 30 seconds left but you have to tell me about the two appellate issues that mr. sandusky could raise to continue this court effort. >> well, there are two big ones and i will throw a smaller third one on the side. one, he can say that there was a rush to judgment here.

he was indicted first in november, then in december of 2011. this case was on trial by june of 2012. >> very quick. >> that's the rocket docket. >> so too fast. number two? >> number two is a very interesting one. the prosecutor in his summation said -- referred to the bob costa interview. there was a pregnant pause when costa said to him, did you ever sexually abuse any of these boys? instead of answering right away saying, are you kidding, i'm innocent, there was this painful silence for 15 seconds, and then sandusky said, well, sexually attracted, i love them, but i'm knot sexually attracted to them. in his summation the prosecutor said, an innocent man would have denied he was guilty. he would have said i'm not a pedophile, and now they're saying that's a violation much his fifth amendment right to remain silent. >> that's prong two. i only have five seconds. what's the third prong? >> incompetence of counsel. he's going to fire amendola and

his attorneys. he's going to bring in new attorneys and the first argument they're going to make is he had incompetent trial counsel. >> that's usually the hail mary at the very end of the process. >> that's what you're going to see happen in this case. >> i think you're coming back to discuss this as we continue through this awful process. paul callan, thanks are for the insight. i do appreciate it. we're going to go to break. when we come back, mitt romney, wow, what a week. we'll tell you by the numbers. [ female announcer ] introducing yoplait greek 100. 100% new. ♪ 100% greek. 100% mmm... ♪ oh wow, that is mmm... ♪ in fact it's so mmm you might not believe it's a hundred calories.

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mitt romney riding high a week after the colorado debate, want you to take a look at some new numbers and there you go. a new poll of likely voters shows romney has edged ahead of president obama and the numbers say it clearly, 49% to 45%. cnn's political editor paul steinhauser joins me live from washington as he does almost daily with the numbers story. but i want you to put this one in perspective. is this a huge deal 28 days until election day? >> that's right, four weeks to go until the election, and let's go back to the pew poll number because it does suggest that mitt romney got a bounce out of the debate last wednesday in denver, colorado. let's go to the numbers on the left. you can see the new numbers. this is the new poll from pew

and it indicates romney with a four-point advantage, within the sampling error but look at the september numbers, an eight poi eight-point advantage for the president. let's go to gallup. this is of registered voters conducted both before and after the debate and you can see the president with a five-point advantage. so it is interesting, two different polls, two different stories here. we're going sto see a couple moe national polls to get a sense of how much of a bounce romney got from the debate. i always say this, the battle for the white house is a battle for states and the electoral votes. go to this out of michigan, michigan a state where mitt romney was born. look at these numbers if we have them. look at the president's advantage in michigan. it was ten points back in september. that was the lead. now it's just down to three, which is within the sampling error. we have a lot of polls coming out to analyze. >> that looks like a lot more people came into it than dropped out of it or changed. there's only a wee difference between obama's slide but a massive difference between

romney's gain. >> it was the undecided voters, they really dropped in michigan according to that survey. >> thank you. don't forget, tune into the big debate thursday 7:00 eastern, the vice presidential debate. not sarah palin this time around but it's going to be just as good, it's joe. i always love these debates. i think you do, too, because i think 60 million or some odd of you watched the presidential can he bait last week. the other big news on the campaign trail, the new numbers on how women voters are leaning. things are changing. they went for obama in record numbers back in 2008. and in september it was pretty much a lot of the same. the president has an 18-point lead along likely women voters in the pew research poll. things changed dramatically, folks. ty take a peek. one month from election day and as paul steinhauser likes to say, it's all knotted up. why is this such a big deal 1234 it's a big deal because it's about math.

there are about 10 million more women voters this election cycle than then. joining me to talk about the women and the election is no finer a guest on this topic than the glamour magazine editor in chief, cindy levianp. you had a chance in this issue to sit down one-on-one with president obama and you got to really focus on the women issue. he's aware clearly -- >> yes. >> -- of how important this sector is. >> the fact he sat down with us shows how much the women's vote matter to him. >> did you feel like it was platitude upon platitudes that interviews can be? >> i felt like he spoke to the issues our readers care about. we had done a major poll looking at if you're a young woman in the united states, what are you voting on the basis of? first and foremost, jobs and the economy, no surprise there as it is for every american. but number two, health care.

and when you ask women who support president obama why they do so, the number one reason they cite is health care. those who support governor romney were more likely to say it was because of his position that the government should spend less or that the government should be smaller. >> reproductive rights. >> reproductive rights and that, by the way, primarily for young women is about birth control. it's not really a bedroom issue, more of a bank account issue. >> can i ask you when i was reading through -- i got the transcript, i was reading through the unedited transcript and i have to say i was really kind of shocked that he went into the contraception issue and talked about his daughters. >> absolutely. and i had the opportunity to interview him in 2008 and he did the same thing. i mean, he really does personalize health issues when he's talking about women's cancer issues, he references his mother's struggles with ovarian cancer -- >> it's kind of weird to have a dad talk about his teenage daughters when it comes to the national issue of contraception. >> it is. it's one of those things that some candidates are comfortable with and others nor not. i think the point he was trying

to make was not to politicize his relationship with them one hopes, but really to say if they make the right choices later in life it's not going to be because the government has legislated them to do so, it's going to be because of the backing they've gotten from their parents. >> i didn't get the sense he was being awkward about it or politicizing, but he definitely wanted to put fourth his message of women's health. he seemed to pound that. >> i think he knows it's something that matters particularly to young women. if you're a young, healthy american women, one of the biggest issues you have is paying for your birth control every month and that goes across political lines. >> we brokedown unemployment numbers all the time but this is one way we haven't broken it down or one way i haven't seen it. i was astounded to see we're at 7.8% nationally but that breaks down to 7.3% adult men out of work. 7% adult women. why does that account for the lower number? because the teenager number brings that unemployment rate up to 7.8%.

but the 7% adult women, while that's lower than men, he's still got a problem with women out of work. >> he does. if you look at the raw numbers, at the time i interviewed him, there were three-quarters of a million more unemployment women than there were in this country at the beginning of his presidency. most of the losses right now are, as you know, in the public sector. there are a lot of parts of the economy that women tend to be clustered in if you're thinking about teaching jobs and government jobs that have been hard hit. so that's a challenge that whoever is the next president will have to deal with. >> i have to wrap it up but not without saying where is the interview with mitt romney. >> you would have to ask governor romney that. we had the opportunity to talk to obama and senator john mccain in 2008. he told us because of scheduling issues he couldn't sit down with us. but there's a month to the election. >> can you get it out before the election? >> that's why we have the website. >> glamour magazine, it's on the

stands now so make sure you take a look. remember, for more political coverage as well with the analysis, you can check out cnn.com/politics. i want to quickly take a look at the stock market and find out what's happening there. we're down about 94 and some. our christine romans will talk to me later on with regard to your finances, but something even more important, how the stock market is playing a critical role in what you think about the presidential election versus congress and whether you're going to re-elect someone to go back to the hill. we're back in a moment. when you have diabetes... your doctor will say get smart about your weight. i tried weight loss plans... but their shakes aren't always made for people with diabetes. that's why there's glucerna hunger smart shakes. they have carb steady, with carbs that digest slowly to help minimize blood sugar spikes. and they have six grams of sugars.

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he is part evel knievel, part john glen, and a wee bit of christopher columbus, exploring territory and pushing physical limits to a place no man has ever gone before. his name is felix baumgartner. there he is, and if you don't know him, you should. here he is practicing for a jump, a jump from the edge of the stratosphere. he's going to attempt today to become the first person to break

the sound barrier with his body and to jump from no place that anyone has ever jumped before. our meteorologist chad myers is so excited and cnn's brian todd also excited. both on this story for us. i want to start with you, brian todd, in roswell, new mexico. we've had a delay this morning because of some weather concerns, but i'm hearing that the balloon is now officially being unloaded, unfolded. i think that might be telling. while you can maybe update me on the process, could you also tell me apart from the thrill of all of this, is there a big legitimate reason that we can all benefit from with this jump? >> reporter: absolutely, there is, ashleigh. going to get into that in a second. let's start with the news right now. they are unfolding, unloading the balloon and unfolding it now. that's a very positive sign that weather conditions are favorable for a launch. it's not a definite go yet, but once they unload it and unfold it, they can't really put it back in the box and store it. they've got to use it. that will take about an hour.

it started about 20 minutes ago. then they have to inflate the balloon and that takes another hour. once that inflates, they will start their ascent. that could be, could be, at about 1:00 p.m. eastern time. it will take about 2 1/2 to 3 hours for them to get to the jump off point. that means if felix baumgartner is going to go and jump, it will be probably 4:00 p.m. eastern time, possibly a little earlier. there's a diagram we've been able to access from red bull stratos that shows you this balloon. it's 55 stories high, and that's about the equivalent of the statue of liberty, maybe a little taller than the statue of liberty. so it gives you an idea of how massive this balloon is. as far as the science, ashleigh, yes, what they're trying to see is just what the human body does when it travels the speed of sound. if the speed of sound has any affect on the body when it's just traveling in a spacesuit, that's never been done before. felix baum na

felix baumgartner is about to do this. another thing they will mesh is how this high pressure suit holds up. if it does hold up and is not compromised in any way, this could be the next generation of spacesuit. those are the technological advances they hope to be able to make here with this mission. you know, just a few months ago i talked to felix baumgartner about this and with all of its inherent risks, and there are many, i asked him a key question, is he afraid of dying on this mission. take a listen. >> well, dying has always been part of my life. as a bait jumper you always face death on every base jump and so it's important you do your homework because you need confidence. you have to have confidence in your team and your skills and yourself and you always hope that you're not going to die. it might happen, but i'm going to put everything out there to make sure it's not going to happen. >> reporter: and felix baumgartner has a top team of aerospace scientists and others working behind him. it is very sophisticated in

there. a lot of science and technology at work. it's been planned down to the "t," ashleigh. it looks like conditions are favorable for a launch. >> i just think it's great that there is this suborbital bailout science we will get from this as well. so his sheer will and fortitude could benefit the rest of our space program. brian, stand by for a minute because i know weather has been the issue today. chad myers has been watching this very carefully. chad, just take me to roswell for a moment. i think i had heard something along the lines of just a couple miles per hour of wind and this thing is scuttled, right? >> it's really because this balloon is so large. when it gets up into space at 23 miles high, it will fill six madison square gardens of volume. >> whoa. >> that gives you an idea of how much helium is in this thing. and when the balloon goes up, i'm just going to dro it here, when the balloon goes up, if there's wind at the top of the balloon glowing it down range 50

feet high, they will never be able to catch up. they will be down here and the balloon will just keep blowing and blowing and blowing away. if it touches the ground at all it's trashed. >> it's so thin. >> but it weighs 3,000 pounds. so, yes, it is thin but it is so huge it still weighs an awful lot of poundage here. so what's going to happen and how can we get to the speed of sound? because everybody says, wait a minute, if you're a skydiver, you only go about 100 miles per hour then you slow down because there's air. >> terminal velocity. >> exactly. that's why felix has to go so high, because he wants to get out of the air. so for a while he'll be falling through basically space, no air whatsoever. that's how he'll get above 600 miles per hour. when he gets into the 40,000-foot range, he will general slow down, and then he will be able to pull the chute at about 5,000 feet. they are getting ready. i'm watching the tweets from their twitter feed. they are literally minute by minute on the twitter feet.

he's now getting into his pressurized suit. >> this is a total nerd alert. i just love this. not only that, but your diagram, if anybody thought this was upside down, he is doing this fed first which is just awesome. brian and tot are both watching this live for us. we will continue to stay on the story. a quick break.

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we were worried about the fiscal cliff and the earnings in summer and spring. everyone said now is the time to bail out of stocks. it's just been going up. >> this was the first time we started to panic abouts fiscal cliff. >> but the stock market has kept going up since then. we know a cnn money survey of investment managers, they say they expect the stock market will end probably about exactly there at the end of the year. so we have stalled here. most investment managers think we have stalled right here because of all the other big issues we have. >> what is the actual number, when you ask these investment manage managers what mappers more to them? they're worried about the face c fiscal cliff. they say congressional outcome in november matters more than the presidential race. isn't that interesting? >> and look, optics are everything. who is going to be the leader of the free world, but truly the fiscal cliff will matter more to your 401(k), to my 401(k), to the stock market in general.

>> because congress has to fit that fiscal cliff. and the fiscal cliff, it is huge spending cuts. so hundreds of government programs will be cut dramatically. and it's massive, massive tax increases. the average family maybe making $50,000 a year, your taxes would go up $3,500. that would hurt. that would mean millions of jobs lost and probably a recession. >> $3,500 you don't invest in the stock market. >> this is why it's incredibly critical to the economy overall. congress holds the key. almost everyone thinks they're going to fix it in time. it will be an 11th hour fix and no one knows how they will fix it. that's what keeps the uncertainty going. >> with 30 seconds left, john boehner, speaker of the house, made some poignant comments with regard to who should be making an effort. >> he said he doesn't think a lame duck congress should be doing it. they shouldn't be doing big bills like this. the others say the only way you

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if you haven't paid a lick of attention to the presidential race to this point, it is definitely time to start. i know election day is just four weeks away, but maybe more to the point, early voting is under way in a lot of states. but maybe most to the point, the deadline for voter registration is today in some states. i want you to take a peek at this map because if your state where you live is in yellow and you are not yet registered, get with the program. if your state is not yellow, you may still have some time or, in fact, it may be too late. you can go to canivote.org and find out if you're still okay

for registration baus if you don don't do it and the registration date passes you're sitting on the sidelines. cnn's wolf blitzer joins me live with the state of the race 28 days out. wolf, before we talk about that, i definitely want to give you big props for a very important interview you have coming up. do you want to do a quick tease? >> we will interview during our 6:00 p.m. eastern hour live from ohio, mitt romney is going to be joining us. lots of good questions to ask him in the aftermath of the debate and the aftermath of this bounce that he's received in the polls, so we'll go through a lot of the domestic and national security issues that are on the minds of so many voters out there. there's still a lot of undecided voters, as you well know, and a lot of those undecided voters love cnn because they simply love cnn. so we're getting a lot of questions and a lot of people are tweeting me with their suggested questions, especially from some of those undecided. so i'm reading them, going through them. i will have some good questions for mitt romney, 6:00 p.m.

eastern. one other thing that's also very important, at 4:00 p.m. eastern, right when we start, we'll release our brand new cnn/orc poll in the battleground state of ohio. ohio, ohio, ohio. no republican has won the presidency without carrying ohio, so we're going to see if this bounce that romney is apparently getting nationally, much more importantly also plays in ohio. those numbers will be released at 4:00 p.m. eastern. >> and just to underscore how important ohio is, both of the candidates are there today campaigning. so let me talk about polls. before we get our new one, this pew hol has had some serious affect on the conversation nationally. it shows romney surged from eight points hide in mid-september to four points ahead last week. there is some serious celebrating going on amidst republicans and certainly the romney camp, but i want you to give me your years and years of coverage and tell me about this roller coaster and with a month to go, does this seem like as

big a deal as it is or are we just in a snapshot in time? >> we're in a snapshot in time. it's important, i don't want to belittle it by any means, but, remember, before the debate, there were so many folks out there simply assuming president obama had this thing done, that he was going to get re-elected. they were already planning for that. then all of a sudden he had a poor performance at the debate and that pays off. it shows how important these debates are. there's a vice presidential debate thursday night. that's going to be important, but there's also two more presidential debates, and just like the numbers can go up, they can go down. we've still got a month to go exactly before this election, so if i were working for mitt romney, i wouldn't think this is done by any means. they have to work really, really hard. same with president obama. this is going to be tight. >> well, one thing he's got to be thrilled about, and his camp as well s that his supporters who may have felt somewhat lackluster about it before hand, are starting to show that they really, really, really, and that's what strongly means, they

really support him. it's an 11-point jump for him since last month. so voters enthusiasm is something really critical. polls are one thing, you get a phone call. getting your butt out of yours house, into your car, and going to the polls to vote is whole other thing. you need to be enthused. >> right. you need turnout. that's going to be critical in this election. both of these campaigns, they think they have pretty good what they call ground games, getting the voters out either before, a lot of early voting, or on election day and getting them to show up, getting that enthusiasm is really important, and there's no doubt that mitt romney did a lot of good for himself in generating some strong enthusiasm as a result of his powerful performance in that first debate, but the president will have two more opportunities to turn things around. the ground game getting the vote out is going to be very important. pollsters like to say though, one thing we should be watching, those who are still undecided who tell pollsters they're undecided usually, usually, not always, but usually, ashleigh,

they break in favor of the challenger as opposed to the incumbent. so those undecideds probably are going to break a little bit more for romney as opposed to president obama so that's something we should be looking forward to see what's going on with those undecideds as well. >> wolf, great. thank you. appreciate that. i will give you an extra tease for that interview coming up. everybody, listen up. wolf has a live interview with mitt romney coming up at 6:00 eastern on cnn. wolf, great, looking forward to it, and also looking forward to the vice presidential debate. quick tease for the biden versus paul ryan. vice presidential debate will be right here. we have special coverage starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern time, 4:00 pacific. make sure you tune in. mr. blitzer, thaup for that. nk . . . . . this new phone is amazing.

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a scale of a deadly meningitis outbreak has become extraordinarily troubling. the numbers just keep going up. a cdc spokesman a saying that as many as 13,000 patients in the united states in 23 of the states may have received contaminated steroid injections that are linked to this outbreak. right now you're looking at the number of people already infected with meningitis, 105 people across these nine states. and already eight people have died because of this. senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen has been following this very closely. elizabeth, i just want you to put some perspective on this for me because a lot of people get very scared when they hear meningitis, this is fungal, not bacterial meningitis. can you lay out the significant difference? >> the one big difference and

the reason why fungal is less scary is that fungal meningitis is not contagious. it's not spread person to person. so you only would be getting this fungal meningitis in this outbreak if you received one of these back pain shots and you would know if you got one of them. >> you would know if you had one of the shots, but you would also think as an american that we have an fda and we are all looked after, that drugs are regulated, pharmacies are -- where is the oversight and how do we get a batch like this going out to this many people? >> you know, this one what advocates are telling me is a mess. this medicine was not made by one of the big pharmaceutical companies that you have probably heard of. it was made by a relatively small company called the new england compounding center, which, of course, until now most people hadn't heard of. so compounding pharmacies were set up as almost like mom and pop shops. like if you needed a special dose of something that wasn't made on the regular market, this pharmacy would make it for you. it was not intended to be a

pharmacy that was shipping out doses of dozens of different medicines all around the country. so they're not regulated in that way. the fda basically doesn't have the legal authority to really regulate them. they can only do sort of small things here and there. so the states regulate them. well, the states don't have the manpower or the expertise to be watching over what are basically drug manufacturing facilities and there have been sterility problems in the past. this is not the first time. >> well, perhaps this will definitely open some eyes in terms of oversight and we'll have some change. elizabeth, thanks. thanks for that update. keep an eye on it for us if you would, please. also want to let our folks know as elizabeth watches this she's got a terrific blog, a great page on cnn health called the empowered patient. all you need to do if you want to find out more information on fungal meningitis including a list of all the facilities with the recalled steroids, go to cnn.com/empoweredpatient.

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. so the number much jobs may be on the rise. unemployment may be falling. but if you're one of the millions and millions of americans still out of work, it's a bummer. and if you're lucky enough to land a job interview, there are things that you can do at that moment. that's go time. al wlis siclisoison kosik knows critical things to do are at go time. tell me what i need to know. >> so here's what's interesting. you see the little bits of brightness in the job market. you see the unemployment rate dropping to 7.8%, lowest unemployment rate since january 2009. so, yeah, with the jobless picture getting a little bit befr, the big question is how are you going to ace that interview when you get it. so we spoke with a career coach with six figure start and she says don't wait for the interviewer to ask the right questions. you should go in knowing a few

points that you need to make and work them right into your answers. remember you don't know how long this interview will go, so you need to make sure to get your point across sooner rather than later. another tip, don't forget to smile. caroline says most communication is nonverbal. so have a firm handshake, make eye contact, sit up straight, smile. because it shows the interviewer you're confident and you're interested. and finally, don't forget to ask about the next step. get a time line and a point of contact. that way you'll know when to check back and keep the conversation going. >> i'm surprised on your list it didn't say watch what you wear. don't wear a tuxedo, but leave the board shorts behind, too. >> that's kind of obvious, right? >> you would think. al wliclisoison kosik, nice to . [ mujahid ] there was a little bit of trepidation,

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just 28 days until election day and we're taking an in-depth look at voters in america. tennessee has one of the strictest i.d. voter laws in the country. it can be put to the test in a couple of weeks. critics are saying the law prevents scores of people for being naughty, but others say it prevents legitimate people from voting like thelma mitchell. take a look. >> i'm thelma mitchell, nashville, tennessee. i'm 94 years old. i never drove. i tried twice to get driving license and couldn't get it. didn't pass to get them. so i didn't try no more. well, when i went to vote, he said you're not from this country.

i said sure. i said i worked for the state of tennessee for 29 years. really 30. and he says but you can't vote because you're not from this country. i get to use my state i.d. card and the letter they sent to me from the state. i think it should be easier to do. i was probably in my late 20s and i've been eager in voting ever since. i worked on the second floor in the capitol. i was just a maid, clean up girl, keeping the desks and stuff clean. but i loved it. learn how to speak up for yourself. if you can't make it, keep trying. >> thelma mitchell, good for